MOTHERS' WORK

By MARGARET CARLSON

It's long been a tenet of conservative family-values orthodoxy that mothers should stay home with young children. Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly, who racked up countless frequent-flyer miles killing the Equal Rights Amendment, says, "The baby needs enormous care for a long time. Hired caretakers are no substitute for a mother." William Kristol, editor of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard, says,"At the end of the day, family is more important than work as a way to break the cycle of dependency."

So it's ironic that Republicans are spearheading the drive to send welfare mothers into the workplace, no matter how lowly the work, no matter that the child is still in diapers, and--until moderates forced some into the bill--without more funding for child care. Under the current proposal, a mother's protected time with her children under three is over. Wisconsin, a model for welfare reform, is gearing up to cut off benefits for any mother who won't report for work when her child reaches the age of three months.

This is a departure from the original purpose of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which was designed to provide an income for widows and mothers who don't have a man around the house. Even now that most women hold jobs, there is a general recognition that the problems that beset all working mothers are overwhelming for poor women on their own. The 1988 Family Support Act, intended to ease mothers from welfare to work, exempts women with children under three and requires only 20 hours of work from mothers of children between three and 13--with guaranteed child care. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan scolded the White House for its eagerness to compromise so as not to be seen as soft on welfare. "This will be the first time in the history of the nation that we have repealed a section of the Social Security Act. If this Administration wishes to go down in history as one that abandoned the national commitment to dependent children, so be it...I shall not be."

You might think that the sheer arithmetic of what Senator Edward Kennedy called the "Home Alone bill" would doom it among budget-minded Republicans. As Wisconsin shows, workfare with adequate social supports is much more expensive than welfare, and even the additional $3 billion now allocated in the Senate will not be enough. Simply ignoring child-care needs, as the Republican bill did initially, seems punitive and cruel, especially when the jobs are dead-end and low wage. At the Fairfax County, Virginia, welfare office, the few positions listed on the bulletin board last week ranged from pet grooming to newspaper delivery (report at 4 a.m., not a great time to get a baby sitter) to child care, all at minimum wage. Only when you're looking after other people's children--and leaving your infant in a group day-care center--does mothering qualify as work.

There's no evidence that taking away benefits will turn back the explosion of illegitimate births. There are more powerful forces at work than a $300 monthly check. Columnist George Will warns fellow conservatives against saying "nothing could be worse" than the current system. They are underestimating the potential damage to children, he argues. He recalls similar rhetoric about another broken system: state-run mental hospitals. Patients were discharged into community-based programs for their own good. Turns out, something was worse: homelessness.